NEW YORK—"How we conduct ourselves when we become independent," says Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah of the new nation of Ghana in an article in Africa Today, "will effect not only Ghana but the whole of Africa.

"We have a duty not only to this country but to the peoples everywhere in Africa who are striving toward independence. If we can make a success of our independence, we shall have made an incalculable contribution toward freedom and progress throughout Africa."

Thus the leader of this new sovereign state, the first nation in the British Commonwealth to be governed by Africans, points up the importance of Ghana's rebirth to all of the people of the African continent.

MARCH 6, when this former Gold Coast colony formally became independent, will go into history as a great day for the citizens of Ghana, just as the Fourth of July is a great date for us.

Certainly its significance is impressed upon the minds of the students from Ghana studying in this country who will go back to help in the development of their nation.

One of the most interesting sessions of the Washington, D.C., conference sponsored by the American Association for the United Nations earlier this week dwelt upon the Near East's future. Roscoe Drummond, Washington correspondent of the New York Herald Tribune was the speaker.

At the conference's closing session, the findings of the section meetings were presented by the rapporteurs. None of these findings were passed as resolutions and none of the individuals attending the conference committed their organizations by voting in favor of the findings.

But they will carry back to their organizations the feelings of the people gathered there on the major issues before the United Nations.

At Edward G. Robinson's invitation, I went to see "In the Middle of the Night" on Broadway. What a finished performance he gives!

As an elderly manufacturer whose wife has died and whose sister is trying to get him remarried, he is simply delightful. It may be well to remember that there is more to marriage than mere physical attraction, and the end of the play drives that home.

The play is amusing, touching in spots and, while all parts are well acted, Mr. Robinson's performance stands out. I think you will enjoy it if you have the good fortune to see it.

I flew to Boston Tuesday afternoon to speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and returned to New York late in the evening.